Hapa Sushi Grill & Sake Bar
- Price Range: $$
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Street
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: Yes
- Takes Reservations: Yes
- Take-out: Yes
- Waiter Service: Yes
- Outdoor Seating: Yes
- Good for: Dinner, Lunch
- Alcohol: Full Bar
18 Reviews for Hapa Sushi Grill & Sake Bar
Hapa happy hour is great!
The 2 rolls for $5 menu is great and what goes better than Purple Haze Sake and some edemame. yummmmy!
I went to the one on pearl st. much more than the one on the hill. Both can get very very crowded and very very noisy.
It's an experience going here, and thats what I like. the noise and the crowds were part of it. but the fun delish food didn't hurt either. Granted, I'm kind of a sushi wimp, so i really enjoy the vegetarian ones and the cheater ones like the orgasm rolls and what not. But I always had a great time with good food.
Make SURE to go here for happy hour. Otherwise its prolly a little overpriced or a lot. : ) and more than 4 or 5 people in a group gets a little chaotic, but it can work as long as you're okay with not hearing everyone in your group.
I really don't know what to rate this place. As far as being a sushi bar it probably gets like 2 stars. The rice is poorly made, fish quality is semi-suspect. Sushi chefs poorly trained. Rolls falling apart. Sushi is way overpriced .
But it all changes during happy hour after 10pm. For happy hour it gets 4 and half stars. $3 large sakes of different flavors. $2 appetizers. 2 for 1 rolls for like $4. You can drink sake and eat salmon\avocado rolls until you dont know whats happening anymore. The atmosphere is lively and fun. By the time you've been there for 30 minutes who cares what the sushi looks like and whether or not the chefs can even locate japan on a map. It's a great time and I recommend it as long as you go in knowing what to expect.
3 and half stars
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Not traditional sushi. But what do you expect? They are HAPA. In fact, five stars just for being called Hapa.
I know. I'm skewing the ratio. Does anyone in Boulder actually know what Hapa means?
Another five stars if you do. I'll speak to Yelp about it.
But really. Five stars for the photo op with the sign out front (at 8 in the morning during a mad search for coffee, even better) and five stars for being able to come back to the bay area with proof that someone is crazier than we are...
HAPA.
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OK the food was fabulous and I want to call this a 5 star restaurant. But I just can't because of deplorable service. Maybe this 2 star rating will draw the restaurant's attention and knock somebody up the side of the head.
We came here on a Sunday as really only a party of 5. Well, 5 and a baby. I believe the automatic 18% gratuity is pegged on only for parties of six or more, but apparently because of the baby (who ordered no food, incidentally) they decided to put on the automatic gratuity. I should have protested, but there were too many other things to complain about so I never got around to that.
In fact, I believe the 18% automatic gratuity, which we only found out about at the end of our meal, was probably why we were screwed so royally on service at Hapa. Why worry about us? She was going to get her tip regardless.
All three of our appetizers never came. We ordered as appetizers 5 Miso soups, one edamame, and one order of potstickers (gyazu). Not one of our appetizers came. On their own.
She brought our main courses out first, a set of various sushi (which were all delicious). I waited a bit and finally realized the Misos were not materializing. The waitress brought them only after I brought it to her attention. Nothing else came. As our sushi was finishing up, another member of our party noticed the potstickers had never shown up, and the waitress brought the potstickers after been told about them. Finally, at the end of the meal we realized the edamame also never was brought, and by then we did not care.
When we told our waitress about all the missing appetizers, she apologized briefly (but not expansively) and offered, almost by way of explanation (or excuse) the fact that she was distracted by a much larger (and no doubt, due to their heavy alcohol consumption, more profitable) party of 15 diners that she was also serving. She did not at the time explain to us that we would be socked for an 18% gratuity for her lousy service.
The manager came by and without apology told us we would be discounted the cost of the Miso soups that were late (also of course we were not charged for the edamame) - so that saved us a whole ten dollars off our $100+ bill. I would have preferred a heartfelt apology for being screwed over due to the more profitable 15-person party. I got. . . no . . . satisfaction.
As other Yelp reviewers have noted, the food and Saki were exquisite. I had a flight of four Momokawa sake (yum). One of the favorite sushis brought out was a house specialty, the aptly named Multiple Orgasm. We also had about six other sushis, and while I am not a sushi expert, it seemed the best sushi I had ever had.
The bathrooms are beautiful with flowers in vase, softly lit mirrors, that sort of thing. The music piped through the restaurant was chill, world electronica - just what we love. This could have been a 5-star experience if we had had better service. When will waiters and waitresses learn how devastating their attitudes can be to a diner's enjoyment of the restaurant as a whole? A waiter is a host - a bad host can ruin an experience that could have been perfection itself. It doesn't matter how good the food is. Suppose the food was really, really great, then the waitress started beating you upside the head with a rubber hose. I think you would be hard-pressed to leave that restaurant a satisfied customer.
Hey Yelpers - find out about whether Hapa is going to sock you with an automatic 18% gratuity - and if you are, be prepared to fight for good service and don't take any guff from bratty, dismissive waiters and waitresses.
Overall, our experience at The Kitchen was far better.
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Cool trendy place on the 16th street mall... but when the best part of the meal was the edamame beans marinated in hot peppers and soy sauce -- that's pretty sad.
Sure it may not be "traditional" sushi.. but holy shit, their attempt at making special house rolls was horrendous. I forget what I ordered, but the waitreess recommended something that ended up being something like a california roll slathered in mayo and then fried.. uh... wtf people. that's gross. Eating a super size of mcdonald's fries would have been more enjoyable in my quest to clog my arteries. Everything else was ho-hum.
oh yah, and I suppose the bill comes in a folder that says "The Damage" is pretty cool.
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I'm being completely biased because I used to go here in college all the time and knew many of the chefs and managers (when it was on the hill too). Some were good acquaintances and my friend married a manager so...the food isn't traditional here. It's more fusiony Japanese- Hawaiianish which I think is the whole point. If you're in Boulder and miss Japanese/Hawaiian food, this is the perfect place to go!
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Really good sushi and great prices. Also the fact that they have soy paper allows my wife to eat sushi for the 1st time ever! Nice atmosphere and attentive service.
It is time my friends for you all to hate me, because it is time to knock the seemingly invincible Hapa off of its high horse.
So, let's review: Hapa tries to be ultra-hip, which I suppose it succeeds through strange robot Japanese pop-culture graphics. By suceeds I mean to say that this place is always packed, which has continually vexed me.
Now, when you go to Hapa and sit down, you are crammed in, since this place is way too small for how many people are constantly here at all hours and times. The service has always thus been strained.
We started off with some roasted pea pods (ekamai?), which were not so hot, and continued on to the rolls.
I then got a bowl of Miso, which was good....the best thing at this place.
Still, $30 later I was still super hungry.
No! Sushi, I refute you! I don't care how exotic you are; if I am still hungry after throwing down 2 hours of my salary for rolls and wraps (not including saki, which in all seriousness, I've had better), then something is seriously rotting in the State of Denmark.
But alas poor Horatio, I am alone in such disdain of sushi and its insanely over-priced and annoying hype. So, go ahead, throw down your $50 for your meal. I'll take my 10 Chipotle burritos for the next two weeks in exchange tyvm.
-----
Alright, so I've been getting mad shit from my girlfriend, who happens to love Hapa, since I refuse to eat fish...and therefore can't eat half of what is on the menu, so fine. 2 stars; I'm still pissed it'd take $75 to get satisfied.
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My boyfriend and I sat at the sushi bar, which had a little pond streaming in front of it, and it reeked like mold. I wanted to be by the water of course and so, we sat side-by-side and suffered the entire meal as we kept getting whiffs of the moldy smell.
I got the teriyaki chicken at this joint and was not as impressed with the chicken as I was the beef at the Denver location. I was also not as impressed with the service... Which was a little lazy and unresponsive.
The outside patio and cool-cat advertising make this a popular place among locals and sushi lovers. Come here for some decent Japanese food in a nice urban location.
* Star one is for funny advertising that I don't really laugh at
** Stinky stink star two is for having a little pond/stream near the sushi bar... even if it did smell
*** Pearl Street humor star four is for stellar people watching and eye-catchers on Pearl street
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Love Hapa Sushi and go there everytime I visit Boulder. Great food, great staff, personable sushi chefs, wonderful location. Check out the specials. I hear the Playboy roll is a winner. Anything Saba is great too.
If Pearl Street is too busy, try Hapa on the Hill!
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I'm not sure how to even be constructive about this because... it was just... bad. Just bad. The service was weird and inconsistent. Even though we got there just before the dinner rush and the inside dining room was empty, we got stuck at a crappy table right in the middle of the room, so that the waiter for the table next to us' butt was in our face. Although we did enjoy making fart noises at that time.
I had been here once before and was kinda "eh" about it... not bad, but not something I'd rush back for. This time our sushi was just yucky. I loooove sushi. I mean it- LOVE. So, yeah, I'm picky. I grew up around fresh fish and my little non-fresh-fish radar goes off pretty quickly if somethin' ain't right. Although, with most of our rolls, it wasn't so much that the fish didn't taste fresh, but it didn't taste like anything at all. It was so icy cold that all flavor was lost. I had a shrimp tempura roll (with the tempura shrimp inside, not a fried roll), and it was like... chewy. Hard to describe the texture of the tempura but it was gro-oss. I thought the spicy tuna rolls were just okay, but my boyfriend thought they were disgusting. Definitely on the mushy side. The special CU Roll of the night that we ordered was okay, but it had a nice hunk of plastic wrapper inside which kinda ruined it for me.
Other irritations were that the waiter did a really poor job of telling us which rolls were which, so we were confounded as to what we were eating at times. I still don't know if I ate any Philly roll, of which we ordered 2. No idea, cause nothing even looked like a Philly roll. The biggest frusturation of all though was that every single roll was barely thrown together, so that it broke into a million pieces as soon as it was touched. We had such a mess of rice and fish and veggies on the plate, it was like WWIII up in there. Ick.
Overall, really really disappointing. Several times we mentioned walking out to go over to Japango, and that was before the food even got there.
I must be missing something, people...
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Great sushi. Make sure to try the orgasm roll. The name says it all. The originality of some of the dishes is what makes this place special.
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i still talk about this place and have not been in forever. i had never had hot sushi like the "orgasm roll" or anything like it before. i liked this place a lot. the sushi was good and we ordered a couple bottles of wine and had a blast. i thought the prices were good too.
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Hapa is my favorite favorite sushi joint. I live in Chicago now and every time I go to a sushi restaurant I think, "This is just not Hapa." When you make your trip to Hapa, don't waste time with the rolls you can find anywhere.....why have a California roll when you can order a Multiple Orgasm roll?! And orgasmic it truly is. In my book, Hapa's real success comes in the form of its highly unique, highly flavorful, baked sushi and "The sauce". I don't know what is in this sauce, but I'd bath in it if I could.
Hapa also has better (richer and more chocolatey) desserts than most sushi places so save room (if you can.)
I may have to fly to Boulder right now, my mouth is already watering.
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This is my favorite sushi place in Boulder. I love every sushi joint in town, but for whatever reason Hapa is the one nearest my heart.
My only complaint is that it can become quite crowded on a busy night (a dilemma more problematic due to the narrowness of the building). But this is more than made up for by the delicious food and the out-of-this-worldness of the Multiple Orgasm roll.
Used to be Boulder's hip spot for sushi way back when. But now, Who are these folks even? You pay for atmosphere. Always crowded. I guess a good place to go if you'd like to show off new fashions, or your company. One thing, always seem to be bouncing dance music...! So, there's that. Decent sake...
I visited Hapa twice over the past weekend, and what a treat. Very fresh sushi, with creative twists. Loved the triple X roll (hamachi with jalapenos) and surf and turf, which are not listed on the menu but are wonderful! The sashimi was sliced very generously. Besides the sushi, the magic mushrooms (salmon wrapped avacodo topped with a Japanese aioli) were delicious as well. I liked the low key atmosphere and very friendly staff. We'll definitely be back the next time we're in town. I could sit and sip sake at the sushi bar for hours! Great spot.
All i can say is that you pay for the good looking staff. Sushi is ok sake choices are okay. And the owner is a jerk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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